


Light's Out

by inujuju



Series: HSWC 2014 Fills [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Asphyxiation, Choking, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, fear of the dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1912092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inujuju/pseuds/inujuju
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you went into the dark room to find you snuggle up to your mirthful brother, you didn't expect him to already be awake. And you definitely didn't expect him to start strangling you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Light's Out

**Author's Note:**

> My GamKar Entry for the HSWC Main Round 1(Prompt: Butterfly Effect). It got seven votes and I'm super proud of that :)

Wild hair, snarling fangs, and mad red eyes are all you can see in the oppressive darkness. Hands that normally soothe your aches grip your neck, leaving bruises. The fingers shake endlessly against your voice box. Normally, the one above you is so wonderfully loud, filling the room with his voice and presence. But now, his body blends in with the shadows, and you only notice him by the pure  _silence_  that clings to him.  
  
At this moment in time, everything is wrong.  
  
You move, slowly, trying not to startle him into slicing your throat and spilling indigo all over the tile floor. You can tell, by his cheeks outlined with candy red tears, that he’s not his miraculous self at this moment.  
  
Suddenly you feel helpless, because even though the body is the same the actions, the mirthful manifestation of your brother’s pity and hate, are so very, very different.  
  
His skin  _boils_  under the palms of your fingers, threatening to burn them if you continue to touch him. At the touch of your skin he jerks back, almost taking you the motherfuck with him, but freezes just as quickly. You remember how he always complained that you were like an ice rock left out in the freezing hours of winter, but you never truly noticed the difference in your blood.  
  
Not till now, that is.  
  
And yet with rage blinding his eyes as they did yours, you find yourself thinking that you’re not that motherfucking different no matter what temperature your blood is being at.  
  
“Karkat,” you ask so softly that you ears can barely pick it up, yet it echoes in the room like a motherfucking  _roar_. His body tenses like a bow string ready to snap, and his grip on your throat increases exponentially. You have to breathe through your nose if you hope to get even a spoonful of miracle air.  
  
His breathing, so silent from fear, has changed to that of heavy desperation; you can’t fucking figure out why. You’re still at a motherfucking loss of what to do, because you ain’t no miracle troll like him, with his huge blood pusher that pumps serendipitous pity throughout his whole being. So you figure you’ll repeat his name again and hope for a different result.  
  
It doesn’t motherfucking work.  
  
Before you even have the –kat on your tongue he lifts your neck, taking your head and obnoxious horns with it, and slams you down like a meteor crashing into your hivestem. For a second you forget how to breathe, your thinkpan trembles and you fuck you are suddenly  _terrified_.  
  
Karkat is your leader and your best motherfucking friend, but you’ve never seen him wield such strength. Even in the fight against the Black King, Karkat barely had a time to react before the cursed fucker struck him unconscious. (Blasphemous heretic ended up on the wrong side of your clubs for what he did to your Karkat.)  
  
Tears that burn and form red smoke land on your face, ripping you out of your head and back into your body that is desperately gasping for air. Despite the pain they cause, what really scorches your blood pusher is the fact that your best beloved is crying and you are doing nothing to soothe him. You’ve got to fucking fix this shit, but you don’t know how, and your throat refuses to utter his name again.  
  
Your body screams in fear and urgency to fight and live, but your mind is drowning in pity so deep that you have no clue what to do. You just watch Karkat’s face instead.  
  
A face so lost to instinct that those dried lips slowly turn towards a smile.  
  
And it is that, a mirror of red rage sockets and cruel humor of the least mirthful, that pulls your body into action. You suddenly know, as if the messiahs told you themselves, what you should, no, what you motherfucking  _need_ to be doing right the fuck now.  
  
You reach out to Karkat before he reaches for you.  
  
Almost as if he was made of sand and not stone, you set your palm against his cheek. The choking stops, along with his harsh gasps, and that terrifying silence that isn’t your brother tries to wrap around you both, but you ain’t having none of that bullshit no more.  
  
“Shoooooosh.” It sounds strange, almost awkward, coming from you. You pap his cheek with your right hand and pap his shoulder with your left, and it’s odd and clumsy and you wonder if this is what Karkat felt when he calmed you down way back at the start.  
  
“Shooooooosh, shoooosh, it’s okay, best friend,” you chirr gently to him, you voice box straining from his grip. For a moment, it seems like you have succeeded, his grip lightens and his eyes shift to orange. But then you open your big mouth and call his name, and suddenly his fingers are back on your throat and his eyes flashing red like fire.  
  
You pap his face repeatedly, forcing choked shooshes from your throat until finally he lets go and just _drops_.  
  
The two of you lay there, the room echoing with your shooshes and Karkat’s hiccuping breathes until finally he speaks.  
  
“ _I’m so fucking sorry,_ ” he cries out as if he’s done something so terribly he can never undo it. You laugh, just a little,  _just a little_ , hoarse.  
  
“Glad to see my bro is all back to being his miraculous self,” you comment, rubbing the back of his head. “You alright now, motherfucker?”  
  
Karkat stiffens and his voice takes on a strange tone. “Am _I_  okay? Gamzee, what the fuck?!” He pushes himself up but doesn’t make eye contact. “I should be asking  _you_ if  _you’re_ the fuck okay! I wasn’t just strangled out of my thinkpan by some fucking troll who can’t even tell an enemy from his _fucking moirail-_ ”  
  
“Shoooooosh bro,” you whistle out and pull him back to your chest. You rest your face against his hair and hear him sigh, probably subconsciously, from the relief of something cool against his roasting head. “None of that noise just yet, alright?” You can tell he wants to fight by the way he tenses in your arms, and you feel yourself thankful for the common action, one as familiar to you as your horn pile.  
  
He’s your Karkat again, and you are so mother fucking thankful, because you really didn’t know what to all up and do there for a moment.  
  
“I-I’m fine Gamzee,” Karkat stutters out despite the fact that he’s practically clinging to you. “Let’s just get the fuck out of this dark as shit room and fix you up.” The way he pulls away though, sudden and desperate, isn’t the same as his normal dismissals. It’s still _wrong,_  and you can’t bring yourself to leave it at that.  
  
“Hold on a minute, Karkat.” He tenses but you keep your arms around him. “Let’s jam for a bit, no need for you to run around in some pointless thicket when you’re already lost in a motherfucking thorn bush.”  
  
You can feel his face scrunch up in confusion. “Gamzee, what the fuck are you talking about?”  
  
“What I mean to say, oh diamond of mine,” Karkat perks at the mention of one of your miraculous nicknames for him. “is are  _you_ okay?” He opens his mouth to answer, body shaking just a little, but you don’t let him. “Fucking worried about you, my main motherfucker.”  
  
You curl up around him, almost hiding him from the darkness you’re both in. “I know that we’re all fucking schoolfed that diamonds are all about one fucker getting to snuggle with the most choice of brothers, but I don’t think that’s quite right, Karkat.”  
  
He scoffs, clearly unamused by your idea. “Gamzee, you know shit about romance and are probably the furthest fucking thing from having the intelligence and tact of rewriting an entire fucking quadrant! The  _horror terrors_  are closer to the new planet we’re racing towards than you are to the knowledge of how a functioning moirallegiance works!” You can’t stop the laughter that escapes your throat, so relieved to hear your miracle’s words rather than his silence. Karkat bristles. “Gamzee, I’m serious! Just let me look after you!”  
  
You quiet down slowly and then shake your head. For a split second Karkat’s body feels a lot more  _cold_ that it should be.  
  
“I think you need some motherfucking care too, Karkat…” You tilt his head up to yours and rest his forehead on your own despite the paint. “I _need_ you, Karkat. You’re my motherfucking anchor, my mirthful diamond in the night sky! But, best beloved, I feel like it’s not motherfucking  _fair_  that I get all the miracles from this relationship. I pity you too Karkat.”  
  
Karkat’s eyes are locked on yours and his eyes radiate from the tears pooling in them. You wipe them away as gently as you apply your paint to your face.  
  
“I never realized…” you begin, standing on the edge of a motherfucking cliff of a discovery so grand that no other troll has dared to take the plunge. “That calming someone down…” Karkat is so focused on your words, his warmth and weight proof that he’s there _with_  you, that you take the dive. “Is so  _motherfucking terrifying_.”  
  
Karkat goes rigid beneath you, and  _fuck_ , you messed up! You can see it in his eyes, the way he pulls away, the way his very core  _shakes_. His words, normally so carefully thought out become nothing but a flood of a repeated ‘sorry’ that threatens to drag you both under.  
  
“Karkat!” you call out, holding him tightly to your chest before he can drift away. “I...” You try again, words never being your motherfucking forte. “ _I never realized just how strong you are to have to face that_.” You have never spoken so softly before, but the way Karkat perks up you have no doubt that he has heard you.  
  
“Karkat, best beloved, you are a _brave_  troll, braver than I can ever motherfucking hope to be.” You smile despite yourself, filled with pride over just how great of a moirail you have. “To be able to stand up and face such motherfucking rage and  _still_  pity it with all your being is a skill I most envy.  
  
“When you were all angry, just filled with rage and barely here as is a stranger jumped into your body, I couldn’t think of  _shit_  to do for you. All I did was cry out like some pathetic wiggler stranded on the beach.” Karkat chokes at your words, but instead of pulling away, he pulls at you, and he’s just so mother fucking  _precious_  to you.  
  
“Karkat, I don’t know nothing about romance, but I do know what my blood pusher all up and tells me to do and it tells me to treasure the  _fuck_ out of you. To protect you from those body thieving aliens just as you protect  _me_.” He doesn’t laugh at your joke, despite how clever it is, but he does relax in your hold a little.  
  
You smile and rub your face against his hair. “Pity goes both ways, so I think that the papping and the shooshing should too.” Pulling away you tilt his head up to yours once more. “Now why don’t you tell me what’s got my best motherfucking diamond all lost in a wicked thorn bush?”  
  
Karkat doesn’t meet your eyes, and more than once he opens his mouth only to close it. But that’s okay, you think, you can wait. There’s been a time when he had to wait for you, and you think that while Karkat will always be braver than you, perhaps you could be more patient than him.  
  
“I woke up, and it was dark.” He states it as if it even didn’t hijack his mind and throw it into a blind rage and panic. You brush his cheek gently. “I’m… I’m not that big of a fan of the dark, and fuck, I sound like a fucking wiggler-“  
  
“Shoosh.” You pap him twice on the cheek and he blinks at you, confused by the action. Slowly he nods and takes a deep breath before continuing.  
  
“Some trolls broke into my hive once, snooty neighbors or some shit like that. Crabdad shut off all the lights, make them think we weren’t home or some pan-rotten idea like that. Damn lusus was never that bright.” Karkat’s lips pinch a little at the mention of his guardian but he powers through it like the leader he is. “Back then my head was stuck, is still stuck, in ‘you are a mutant and everyone and their God damn ancestor is out to kill you’ so I… I cowered like a wiggler in my ablution trap while they trashed my place.”  
  
You’ve never had to hide from anything but the sun… yet watching Karkat’s face, feeling his hot tears beneath your fingers and his light tremors fill his body, makes you thank the mirthful messiahs that you didn’t.  
  
“They kept calling out my name, how the fuck they knew it, I never found out, and then they found me and…” he cuts off and glances at you as if checking something. The way he looks at you, eyes open yet guarded, confuses you, and you wonder what he’s thinking. But he laughs weakly, and the thought is gone from your thinkpan as he starts up again.  
  
“Of course I killed them like the badass I am, but it became something of a routine with my shit-for-pans lusus. Random trolls in our hive? Turn the lights off so Karkat knows to become a badass motherfucker and kill them upon sight. Surprise them or some shit like that.” He gestures to the room but keeps his arms in the cocoon your body has made for him.  
  
“Usually I leave the lights on like a sane insane troll, but some asshole must have turned them off while I was asleep, and now here I am breaking every law set by the romance masters of the pale quadrant and having to be calmed down by you. Fucking disgraceful.”  
  
You ruffled his hair lightly. “Not to insult your know-how, motherfucker, but I don’t think romcoms count as schoolfeeding,” you snicker, even as Karkat lightly punches you, face lit with a scowl.  
  
“Shut the fuck up, you massive disaster, and let’s get the fuck out of here before my pan jumps back into ‘kill all that twitches’ mode.”  
  
You grin. “That’s alright, Karkat. I’ll make sure to pull you out of that like you did me.” He turns away, blushing and stutter his words with embarrassment.  
  
“Y-yeah but if that h-happens again you might get fucking hurt! At, at least when I calm  _you_  down, I don’t get a fucking claw to the throat!” You stand up slowly, picking him up as you move, pleased that he doesn’t struggle.  
  
“I can take a hit or two, best beloved. You calm me down like the brave little miracle you are, and I’ll patiently wait for you to fall back down to me, alright?”  
  
Karkat doesn’t agree, but he does cling tighter to you. “We’re fucking catastrophes,” he mutters, and you have to stop yourself from laughing too loud.  
  
~  
  
Elsewhere on the meteor Rose flips off the computer room’s light for the second time that night. Honestly, what is with everyone on this rock and leaving lights on?

**Author's Note:**

> Papper Gamzee needs more love. Broken Karkat needs to be more broken. These two dorks need to be shoved together in sloppy-cuddle piles more often.


End file.
